Know that this day you are a child of the King, and as such you are precious in His sight. Nothing in life is ever promised to be easy, but the joy of it all is being able to experience the pain without feeling the hurt. No pain, no gain. What we come to understand about this life is that God will never put on us more than we can bear.

He also promised that He would never leave us are forsake us, and that is one check you can take to the bank and it forever pay you more than enough dividends to live on for the rest of your earthy life. I have been there. I have experienced some of what you are now experiencing, but today I am encouraging you to remain strong, the devil wants to destroy your mind by taking you down the road of negativity, and if you give him half a chance he will defeat you.

Let me share with you some thoughts I hope that can encourage you and lift you up and fill your heart with peace. Years ago, I learned an invaluable lesson; Whatever we focus on, we become. That simple statement taught me a great deal. Wherever we put our energies or our attention, those things will develop. Another way I like to say it is, “Where the mind goes, the mind follows!” If I begin to think about ice cream, I will soon find myself in my car pursuing ice cream.

My thought will stir my desires and emotions, and I will make the decision to follow them. If we focus only on the negative things in our lives, we become negative people. Everything, including our conversation, becomes negative. We soon lose our joy and live miserable lives and it all started with our own thinking.

You might be experiencing some problems in life not realizing that you are creating them yourself by what you’re choosing to think about. I challenge you to think about what you’re thinking about!

You might be discouraged and even depressed and wonder what caused it. Yet if you will examine your thought life, you will find that you are feeding the negative emotions you are feeling. Negative thoughts are fuel for discouragement, depression, and many other unpleasant emotions. We should choose our thoughts carefully.

We can think about what is wrong with our lives or about what is right with them. We can think about what is wrong with all the people we are in relationship with or we see the good and meditate on that. The Bible teaches us to always believe the best.

When we do that, it makes our own lives happier and more peaceful. I have a great life, I have wonderful children and many beautiful loving grand children. I have been blessed and am privileged to be used by God to bless millions of people around the world through the wonderful ministry He has given me.

But life isn’t perfect, and if I had allowed the devil to fill my mind with negative thoughts as he once did long ago, I would have been defeated. I want to focus on God’s grace and give thanks for all the good things in my life. I don’t want to focus on what I don’t have. An old friend used to quote this saying: “As you wander on through life, brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the donut and not upon the hole.” Too many people focus on what’s not here and what’s not right. All of this is to say that our thoughts largely determine our destiny.

Our thoughts also determine our happiness. Proverbs 23:7 is one of my favorite verses. Thoughts are powerful. They aren’t just words that flow through our minds. So it is very important for us to decide what we will allow to rest inside our minds. We must not forget that the mind is a battlefield.

We must always remember that our adversary will use it in any way he possibly can to trap us. To put it another way, we can’t have a positive life and a negative mind. Our thoughts, our focus are what determine where we will end up. Jesus, our friend and Savior, wants our minds to be filled with positive, beautiful, and healthy thoughts. The more we focus on those things, the more readily we defeat Satan’s attacks.

My Maximized Prayer for you today is this; our most high, ever loving and patient God, I ask You to forgive me for focusing my thoughts on things that are not pleasing to You. I pray that You will help me fill my mind with thoughts that are clean and pure and uplifting. Strengthen me in my time of weakness; lift me up so that I may continue to see the beauty in all things that are before me. In Jesus name, Amen.